Longtime readers of The Prairie Ecologist may remember The Plant Game, a creatively-named feature of this blog that has been dormant for a while. If you don’t remember it, you can go back and find examples here, here or here. I’m sure it will shock you to learn that The Plant Game was a great way for me to come up with a blog post when I didn’t really have anything to write about that week.
In unrelated news, I’m introducing a new game this week called The Dragonfly Game. It is completely different from The Plant Game in that it is about dragonflies, not plants.
Here’s how The Dragonfly Game works. I give you a list of four names. Three are official names (common names, not Latin names) of either dragonflies or damselflies. One is a name I made up. You just have to figure out which is the fake name. Click on your choice. That’s the whole game. I’ll wait a day or so and then put the correct answers in the comments section at the bottom of this post.
Dragonfly names are crazy, aren’t they? Do you think you got all of them right? Check back to see – the correct answers will be below in the comments section starting about 24 hours after this post comes out.
The Prairie Ecologist 
I only got one out of three. Random guessing would have done just as well.
Looking forward to the follow-up.
Here are your answers: The fake names are: #1 Elusive shadowhawk, #2 Forked Glitterwing, #3 Gilded Marshstalker, and #4 Spreadwing Fendancer. The last three are pretty silly, but good enough to fit in with other equally silly names. The elusive shadowhawk, though, is a pretty awesome name for a dragonfly (or something), if I do say so myself. Thanks for playing!
One of the choices I thought couldn’t be a real dragonfly was the umber shadowdragon. I thought you had made up the word “umber.” I had no idea it was a real word. Although, I believed your “elusive shadowhawk.” I thought the fake name for the first question was the common baskettail. What does having a baskettail even mean?
Loved this dragonfly game, Chris — such fun! I’ve written about dragonfly names on my blog too. One of my faves is the Cyrano Darner, named for Cyrano de Bergerac. (Hope it’s okay to share the link to my post: http://natureismytherapy.com/2018/07/19/whats-in-a-name) I hope you’ll do more dragonfly games. :)